The Fox's Walk (17 page)

When we eventually left a couple of hours later, the Sunbeam, polished and shining, was outside the front door, and O'Neill was wearing his chauffeur's uniform. He had a long gray overcoat and a peaked cap; his demeanor, too, had changed with the role he was playing. He assisted Grandmother, who carried two sprays of flowers from the garden, into the back seat, his manner formal, deferential, and courtly. I scrambled in beside her.

“The Abbey Church first, O'Neill. And then Slieverue.”

“Very good, my lady.”

I looked at the back of O'Neill's head. This uniformed man, punctilious about observing the formalities, was the same person who had, only yesterday, cursed at Patience and hit her with a switch after I, through cowardice, had allowed her twice to refuse a small jump. Shocked by O'Neill's sharp cut, Patience had gathered herself and cleared the jump; I had not, and two dark bruises bore witness to my sudden and involuntary descent. But this was not the time to tell Grandmother of this hypocritical double standard.

There was plenty to think about. First I reassured myself that there was nothing sinister about this expedition. Grandmother's initial announcement might have meant anything, but the addition of the word “church” in her instruction to O'Neill seemed a guarantee that this outing would not end in a surprise tonsillectomy. And surely, if something unpleasant were involved, Aunt Katie would have been the one sent with me. Unless, of course, we were embarked upon something so terrible that Grandmother could not trust my great-aunt's sentimental nature; I thought, not seriously, of Snow White and the huntsman instructed to take her into the darkest forest and to cut out her heart. If that were the purpose of the outing, presumably I would have been alone with O'Neill, the very man for such a job. But where was Aunt Katie and why hadn't she been at breakfast P Both the old ladies made a hobby of their health, and it was not unusual for one of them to stay in bed, “resting” until lunch. Might not there be another explanation? The flowers that Grandmother held suggested that my great-aunt had been well and functional that morning, or at least the evening before. The flower room was her domain, and not even Grandmother would have dared to gather so many flowers from her cutting garden.

I glanced at Grandmother. She seemed lost in thought, but I was fairly sure I was not the subject of her contemplation and I turned my mind to less threatening subjects. During the two months since my birthday party, there had never been a full discussion of the behavior of my two male guests. I didn't even know if Aunt Katie had told her sister the full story. I searched for a way to introduce my hero's name into the conversation.

“Clodagh says that Jarvis de Courcy is a Catholic.”

That hadn't come out the way I intended. I sounded much the way Clodagh had when she had offered the information as an explanation for poor behavior. She made Jarvis's Catholicism sound like a malady of suspect origin—unpleasant, infectious, and one for which the victim had only himself to blame. I was immediately aware of O'Neill, for whose brutal behavior I did in part blame the Catholic Church, directly in front of me. It was as impossible that he should react as it was that he had not heard my
bêtise.

But Grandmother seemed to find nothing amiss with what I had said; it was possible that her lack of reaction was on O'Neill's account, but I don't think so.

“We are all Catholics,” she said. “The de Courcys are Roman Catholics. The oldest families in Ireland—the Norman families—were all Roman Catholics. It is only the families who came after the Reformation that are Protestant. Many of the Roman Catholic families had to convert, of course. In order to keep their lands. Miss Kingsley will teach you about that soon, I expect.”

Miss Kingsley. My fears of surgery or abandonment were replaced by the greater likelihood of being found out in cowardly deceit.

“We are doing English history—we've got to the Romans and Boadicea.”

Grandmother nodded approvingly in a way that told me she considered our conversation at an end.

I knew she was not telling me that she considered the harassed Mrs. de Courcy or her undisciplined son her social superiors, but I thought she might be telling me that Clodagh and her family were not necessarily her—our—social equals and that their opinions and taste were open to question or at least confirmation. I remembered now that I had heard Aunt Katie refer to Captain Bryce as a “temporary gent”—a term I had questioned my mother about later. She had reluctantly—so that I should understand the expression should not be repeated—explained the phrase was sometimes unkindly used to describe someone from a modest background who had been given a wartime military commission.

By now we were on the outskirts of Waterford. I had accompanied Aunt Katie there several times during the summer and although the city no longer seemed the magical place it had when I had arrived, sick and bedraggled in the spring, I had begun to think of it as a place that contained a large quantity of children my age, one or two of whom, with a little luck and a proper introduction, might become my friends.

We passed the Quaker school at the top of the hill overlooking the city; the De La Salle college, concealed by tall stone walls; Waterpark, a boys' school; to the left, on the other side of the park, the Christian Brothers, Jarvis de Courcy's education their responsibility; and went over a small bridge and onto the Mall. I was pleased to be sitting beside Grandmother in such a fine motorcar; I felt like royalty and my grandmother, at least, looked the part. We drove along the Quay. On our left were shops, banks, and offices; on our right a cargo ship unloading coal, and behind us a ship loading horses on their way to the war in France. We crossed Waterford Bridge, passed the railway station, and—now on the Kilkenny side of the river—drove a little farther until O'Neill drew up in front of the Abbey Church.

He opened the gates to the neglected churchyard and then stood back. Grandmother and I went inside. She led the way along a path of damp hard earth and moss, strewn with small twigs and leaves from the tall elms that grew to one side of the church, sheltering it from the north wind. I glanced back and saw O'Neill standing outside beside the Sunbeam, under the trees. To either side of us were Irish yews, evergreen and the dark color of mourning. We passed carved stone monuments, worn by wind and rain, and gravestones encrusted with lichen. After a little while, Grandmother turned in from the path, and we walked through long grass and shrubs until she stopped by a grave.

I saw now that she carried only one bunch of flowers; the other; without my noticing, had been left in the Sunbeam. The autumn flowers, Michaelmas daisies and Japanese anemones, were loosely bound with raffia. She untied the flowers and, with two or three graceful movements of her arm, scattered them on the grave.

“Your grandfather is buried here,” she said.

I looked at the headstone: plain gray, and rounded at the top, the lettering carved in small capital letters without ornamentation of any kind.
GENERAL SIR PERCIVAL BAGNOLD, ROYAL ENGINEERS
1852–1910. He had died when I was three years old. I was surprised: It was difficult to imagine a time when Grandmother and Aunt Katie had not lived together at Ballydavid. Even now I have to remind myself that Grandmother at this time was probably much the same age as I am now.

Grandmother stood quietly for a moment—not, as I now think, in prayer. I stood a little behind her, my head bowed respectfully but my eyes on her. After a little time had passed, she sighed deeply and turned aside to point out the nearby graves of a previous generation of Bagnolds. Then we walked silently back to where O'Neill was waiting with the Sunbeam.

The cemetery at Slieverue, perhaps six or seven miles away, was beside the road, separated from it by only a low wall and iron railings. Again O'Neill waited by the car. Grandmother pushed open the rickety gate which stuck a little in the gravel, and we walked up a narrow path. To either side, the roughly cut grass was turning yellow. There were rows of headstones, polished granite, shiny black or white marble; in front of some were wax flowers under glass domes.

I was too young to have developed much sense of the aesthetic, but this orderly graveyard, its bleakness broken only by touches of vulgarity, seemed an unlikely place for Grandmother to visit. I observed her closely. Halfway up the path was a stunted Irish yew, beyond it a tall stone Celtic cross. Grandmother stepped into the grass and I followed her. She stood for a moment in front of the cross and then she laid her flowers on the ground in front of it. I read the inscription,
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MAJOR LAURENCE BURKE, LATE OF THE
90
TH LIGHT INFANTRY
.

“This is my father's grave. He was MP for Waterford.”

“But why is he buried here?”

By here I meant this dreary cemetery, too close to and unprotected from the road. I thought of the dead lying in rows under the coarsely cut grass. At the Abbey Church I could imagine them as part of the life of the overgrown churchyard. Where eternity might be spent with the wood pigeons nesting in the heavily ivied elms, the elderberry bushes and hawthorn growing in the boundary hedges, and the visiting rabbits and friendly, mysterious, nocturnal animals.

“Because he was a Roman Catholic,” Grandmother said. After a pause but with no particular inflection, she added, “He fought for Home Rule with Parnell.”

I had then only a vague idea of who Parnell had been and an even hazier notion of the significance of Home Rule, but I knew that my great-grandfather's politics were not those of the
Morning Post.
Or of my grandmother. Even so, there was pride in her voice when she spoke of him.

We drove silently back into Waterford. I now had to consider myself one-eighth Catholic. I was offended by Clodagh's bigotry and ashamed I hadn't seen it as such at the time. There was no excuse; my mother regarded religious intolerance as insufferably bad manners, particularly between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. On the Catholic side, she said—not intolerantly, though perhaps condescendingly—it could be put down to ignorance, perhaps fostered by the priests, but on the Protestant side it was simply smug and very middle-class.

“Where is Uncle Sainthills grave?” I asked.

“He's buried in France. All the soldiers killed in the war are.” She seemed unsurprised by my question. He was never far from her thoughts, and on that day it was not possible that she shouldn't have been thinking of him. Even I could feel the dead crowding in.

T
HE SECOND WINTER
of the war came—bleak, wet, and cold. The slaughter in France continued; Gallipoli was evacuated. The normally subdued colors that Anglo-Irish women wore became darker. And not only the Anglo-Irish mourned. There was no conscription in Ireland, but by the end of the war—still a long way off—two hundred thousand Irishmen would have volunteered. For some, the Kings shilling was a means of earning a living and of feeding a family at home, but there were others who volunteered through loyalty to the Crown—and for all the confused reasons that young men have enlisted throughout history.

I was less aware of the war than I had been when I first came to Ballydavid. The newspaper arrived every day, the war was discussed each time adults met, but it seemed farther away and of less immediate concern to us than it had been when Uncle Sainthill was still alive.

Christmas, a subdued affair, was celebrated modestly in the cold, sad house. Grandmother observed the traditional rituals despite mourning; not to have done so would have been as out of character as to have ceased wearing stays after her favorite son was killed. We came from a military family and courage was expected on the home front as well as in battle.

The Christmas tree in the murky hall glimmered when Bridie passed it, carrying lamps for the drawing room. Beneath its branches lay a few carefully wrapped presents. The holly on the chimneypieces came from the bushes behind the bleaching lawn; I had gone with Aunt Katie to cut it and helped her carry it back to the house. A sprig decorated the plum pudding at Christmas lunch, and, for my benefit, brightly colored Christmas crackers containing favors and paper hats were set in front of each of our places. Christmas away from my real family had increased my feeling that I was abandoned and adrift. I missed my mother that day, as I still often did at night, but I had already begun to think of Ballydavid as my home.

Uncle William came to lunch on Christmas Day—and to tea, two days later. It was a grim little tea party and at it I made only a token appearance. A letter had arrived just before Christmas; short and straightforward, it had been pored over and discussed as though it were encoded or open to interpretation. An officer from Uncle Sainthills regiment was on leave with his family at Dunmore; he asked if he might call and return a few of my uncle's personal effects.

I do not know what Grandmother and Aunt Katie expected, although I am afraid there was an underlying hope—probably not articulated—that Major Somerville would suggest that Uncle Sainthill might not actually be dead: that he was missing in action, the chances that he might still be alive so slight that his commanding officer had decided not to foster false hope. Or maybe Somerville would bring a last message, even though Grandmother had been told that her son had died instantly, killed by a piece of flying shrapnel.

Although I was as bored and curious as ever, and, as always, seeking information to help understand the rules and reasons of my new life, I would have preferred to have been—to use one of Aunt Katie's expressions—a fly on the wall rather than to be briefly and silently present when Major Somerville arrived.

Poor man! How he must have dreaded the visit. It is possible that this was not the only one of its kind he made during his leave: two stricken women in mourning, a pale and apparently orphaned child in a silent gloomy house, a Christmas tree in a corner of the dark hall adding an unnecessary touch of irony to his task. And the pathos of the possessions he returned: a fountain pen, a wallet, an address book, some letters, a photograph or two, and the cigarette case. He must have been grateful for Uncle William's presence and for the courage of both the women, courage that did not allow them to break down or show emotion until after he had left; each spent the remainder of the day and evening in her room.